Recipes

May 22, 2008

The weather's finally starting to warm up here in da Nort'woods, and I've been feeling the need for an exotic summer cocktail; something a little sweet, a little tart, and very aromatic. Basically, I wanted a Mojito that didn't suck, so I whipped up the following drink, based around Pisco, a Peruvian grape brandy, and AGWA, an herbal liqueur made from Bolivian Coca leaves. The result was, if I may toot my own horn a bit, proof positive that I have a knack for concocting well-balanced tropical libations (having interesting ingredients to work with sure doesn't hurt).

By the way, Tezcatlipoca was the Aztec god of night, the North, temptation, sorcery, beauty and war. Seemed apropos somehow...

Muddle the mint leaves in the bottom of a cocktail shaker, then add all the other ingredients. Shake with 1 cup of crushed ice, then pour into a double Old-Fashioned glass and fill to the top with more crushed ice.

April 14, 2008

After completely flaking in February, and being too-busy in March, here I come again with a Mixology Monday submission for April. Anna from Morsels & Musings is hosting this month, and she's chosen the theme of Fruit Liqueurs. This is fertile ground, as there are tons of interesting liqueurs on the market, and they're among my favorite ingredients to mix with -- the best have strong flavors, balanced with enough sweetness to tame the spirits' bite and stand up to things like citrus and bitters.

But what fruit liqueur to use? I have a few -- a couple different varieties of crème de pêche (as seen in my previous MxMo submission, the Pêche de Resistance), some crème de figue (fig), some crème de fraise des bois (wild strawberries -- this liqueur is amazing), some crème de cassis (black currant), some cerise (cherry), framboise (raspberry)-- wait a second. Framboise!

The tartness and sheer intensity of raspberries makes them one of my very favorite fruits (and alas, their fragility puts them on the expensive side as well -- I can never get enough raspberries when they're in season.) So, after a trawl through The Joy of Mixology, I was thinking about two cocktails in particular as jumping-off points.

The Corpse Reviver No. 2 is one of my very favorite cocktails, and like Dr. Cocktail (though no way do I claim to know even a tiny bit as much as he does), it set me on the path of cocktail geekdom. This drink features equal parts gin, Cointreau, lemon juice, and Lillet Blanc, and it's tied together with a few drops of absinthe or pastis. It's a truly amazing drink, and well worth your time.

The other cocktail I was considering was the Pegu Club, the house cocktail of the British Colonial Officers' Club in Pegu, Burma. (Not incidentally, of course, it's also the namesake of one of the best cocktailian bars around.) This is also a gin-based libation, appropriate for those tropical climes that don't have air conditioning, such as Rangoon (or Manhattan in July.) Accompanying the gin is orange curaçao, lime juice, and doses of both Angostura and orange bitters.

So: using those two drinks as inspirations, and after tinkering around for a little bit, here's what I came up with:

The Catherine

3/4 oz. gin

3/4 oz. framboise liqueur

3/4 oz. Lillet Blanc

1/4 oz. lime juice

2 healthy dashes peach bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Note: I made this with an ordinary framboise liqueur (Les Delices de Saint Paul), but I think it'd be even better with Chambord. Chambord's got an even more intense raspberry taste than the liqueur I used, and a thicker, almost syrupy mouthfeel. I think it'd stand up to the lime juice better. For the gin, I used Plymouth, my usual standby.

For me, one of the hardest parts of coming up with a cocktail is settling on an appropriate name. A friend suggested "the Carla Bruni", which appealed...but I decided to save that name for something involving both French and Italian ingredients. But moving in that same direction, I thought about other French beauties of the age, and of course Catherine Deneuve sprang to mind. Icy at first, but with a smoldering sensuality. I liked it.

March 19, 2008

I felt the French Sheets (noted below) deserved its own post. As I'd mentioned, this was an impromptu invention of Damon, our bartender at Death & Co.

French Sheets(named by my friend Patty, the drink's recipient)

2 oz. rye

1/2 oz. St. Germain elderflower liqueur

3/4 oz. lemon juice

1/2 oz. simple syrup

1 egg white

2 healthy dashes orange bitters

2 healthy dashes Angostura bitters

Shake vigorously with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and serve.

Incidentally, Damon created this drink using Rittenhouse rye, and it was quite delectable. (I'd be interested in trying other ryes, or even an oomphy bourbon like Bulleit or Knob Creek in this.cocktail.)

March 17, 2008

Okay, I know I just barely made it, and if you're on the East Coast or Europe, then I missed it. The Irish (and among them I count Irish-Americans) are not necessarily known for promptness.

I did want to post an Irish-themed cocktail today, first wanted to check:

1. You didn't drink any green beer today, did you?
2. You didn't drink any of those faux-"Irish" cocktails that are made green by the addition of something like crème de menthe, did you?

If yes, then ... oh dear.

If no, then ... yay! Pour a pint of Guinness or Murphy's, or if you fancy a cocktail, try this. It's new, and an original concoction of mine.

After Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová won the Oscar for Best Song for the Irish film "Once," I was inspired to created an original cocktail in their honor, featuring Irish and Czech ingredients.

I mulled around some ideas and decided on a Manhattan variation, using Irish whiskey and the spicy bitter liqueur from the Czech Republic called Becherovka, slightly sweet with a bitter edge and flavors of cinnamon, anise and over 30 other herbs and spices.

This drink, as all original creations should, took some tinkering to get the balance right. The general starting point was Irish whiskey, sweet vermouth and Becherovka. At first I tried using Redbreast, a 12 year old pot still whiskey, which I absolutely love on its own. It didn't work well in this drink, fighting too much with the Becherovka. I moved over to Tullamore Dew, which is my favorite Irish whiskey for mixing (John Powers and Kilbeggan work well too), and that was the way to go. I played with the proportion on the Becherovka to try to get a good balance of spice and sweetness -- I did not want it to be too sweet. The spice flavor was nice, but it wasn't integrating quite well enough for me. A single dash of Angostura helped the whiskey and liqueur embrace each other.

Now for the vermouth. I didn't want to dilute the flavor profile of the liqueur too much, and primarily wanted everything to smooth out nicely. Using our usual Cinzano seemed to leave a bit of a hole in the drink, so I tried Punt E Mes ... and that did it. The bitter edge of that vermouth leapt into the Becherovka's arms but didn't overwhelm the spice, and filled in that hole very nicely. I'm still trying to decide whether or not to back off on the Punt E Mes from 1/2 ounce to 2 teaspoons, but so far I think the former is working pretty well. After trying iteration no. 6 the other night, Wes declared that he liked it, and that's good enough to get it out of the stsarting gate.

The cocktail is named after Glen and Mar's duet/group and symbolizes a wonderful fusion of Irish and Czech (and tastes pretty feckin' good, too).

Combine ingredients with ice and stir for 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Garnish with a thin lemon twist, tied with a loose knot in the center. Fall slowly into your
favorite cocktail sippin' chair.

If you have the ingredients lying around, please do give it a try and let me know what you think. Any ideas and suggestions are welcome as well, but so far I'm pretty happy with it.

February 11, 2008

As noted earlier, I was lucky enough to pick up a bottle of kola tonic a little while ago. Dr. Cocktail's writeup of the Filmograph Cocktail in Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails(an excellent, excellent read that's worth picking up) caught my eye, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

Cola is a flavor I really like, but after what is probably too much diet soda
consumption, regular colas tend to taste too sweet to me. (Fentimans'
Curiosity Cola is the standout, followed by Boylan's Cane Cola, not
that you asked.) I was very intrigued to try the taste of cola in a cocktail, rather than the usual soft drink form.

Getting back to the Filmograph, I took Doc's suggestion to switch out the sirop de citron (he writes "substitute fresh lemon juice unless you like to drink maple syrup out of the can"), but wound up with a pretty sour drink that wasn't too balanced. I've noticed, though, that the lemons at my local supermarket seem to vary in acidity; perhaps it's something to do with the time of year, or maybe they source them from different places at different times? (In the spirit of further research, I guess I'll just have to make myself some Filmographs year-round and compare. Modern living is entirely about sacrifice for the common good.)

Dropping the lemon juice from 3/4 ounce to 1/2 ounce didn't seem to make much of a difference, so I abandoned that tack. Instead, I upped the kola tonic from 1/2 ounce to a full ounce, and got a Filmograph that I enjoyed very much indeed. The kola tonic is richer and more complex than straight cola syrup, and it blends well with the brandy and lemon, creating a very nicely-balanced drink. (The only problem with them is that I don't want to drink them in the evening, as the caffeine will keep me up till all hours.)

Filmograph Cocktail

2 oz. brandy

3/4 oz. lemon juice

1 oz. kola tonic

Shake with ice, strain into a cocktail glass, and garnish with a lemon wedge.

(Sorry to have been away so long, by the by: a long, hectic week has intervened, with parental visits, much tour-guiding, and not enough cocktailian, um, "research." This should be rectified, and soon.)

January 29, 2008

In San Francisco, HOME Restaurant is famous as the place with the "Build Your Own Bloody Mary Bar" on Saturdays and Sundays. What a neat concept - a buffet table set up with pitchers of virgin and nonvirgin bloody mary mix, various kinds of pepper (crushed, pickled, bottled, sauced), pickles of all kinds (pickled okra, pickled asparagus, pickled green beans), celery sticks, olives, lemons, celery salt, horseradish, Cajun spice, lemon pepper, garlic ... it's usually pretty busy, so I'd recommend going really early, or on a very lazy day when you are not in a rush to be anywhere.

In a large pitcher add the horseradish, then add about 1/2 cup of the tomato juice on top. With a wire whisk, blend well to make a smooth mixture. (If you add the horseradish after you add the whole bottle of tomato juice to the pitcher, you'll have chunks floating around that won't blend.)

Now, pour in the whole bottle of tomato juice and add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Let chill in the refrigerator for a hour before serving.

Pour the mixture in wide-mouth glasses and garnish with celery sticks and choice of pickles/olives. Sprinkle a little celery salt on top. Enjoy!

January 26, 2008

I'm getting ready to attend the Edwardian Ball this evening, and I found myself in the mood for a cocktail.

But what? What would be the perfect cocktail for a night like this?

My eyes scanned my liquor cabinet and I perused the contents of the fridge. Hmm. I had a bottle of Moët in the refrigerator. I had a bottle of La Feé absinthe that I bought in Italy on my last trip there. An idea materialized.

The absinthe gave the champagne a beautiful pale green milky color, reminiscent of springtime. On the nose, you smell the absinthe. It overpowers the champagne taste, but the champagne bubbles deliver the absinthe flavor to your tongue. It is quite delicious, and I feel like I should be sitting in a café in Paris wearing a corset and watching a cabaret while flirting with artists and poets. But be warned; it's quite strong, so sip slowly. Let the Green Fairy enchant you, but don't succumb to her completely.

January 12, 2008

Mixology Monday is a great idea, and it's something I'd been interested in participating in for a while. And now, with this blog, I don't really have any excuse not to participate. The topic this time around is brandy, which seems apropos for a winter month...and it's also a good spirit for my first MxMo, since (as I admitted) I don't really know a lot about it.

When I think of brandy, I think of snifters, of course, and evenings spent in front of the fire, rolling the snifter between one's fingers as one contemplates the vapors. (Smoking jackets figure somewhat prominently in this reverie, too.) However, my New York City apartment is equipped with neither fireplace nor snifters (nor smoking jackets), and so I decided I'd have to strike out on my own.

The quintessential brandy cocktail -- and one of my favorite cocktails ever -- would have to be the Sidecar, that heady, complex combination of Cognac, Cointreau, and lemon juice that manages to showcase each of its individual ingredients while simultaneously achieving greatness beyond the sum of its parts. I've had some truly amazing Sidecars -- I single out the ones at Angel's Share and Pegu Club in particular -- so I was anxious to try my own take on the cocktail.

I didn't have any peach brandy in the house, but I did have a bottle of Védrenne "Les Royales de Nuits-Saint-Georges" Crème de Pêche de Vigne that my parents generously brought back from France a few years ago. It's great stuff, with an intense peach flavor, and I thought it'd go nicely with the brandy. And then I got to thinking (always a dangerous thing) about the poached peach with cinnamon that I'd had as a dessert in a restaurant somewhere, and I realized that the clove-cinnamon flavor of Angostura bitters might work well with the crème de pêche. Some experimenting with the Sidecar proportions (as DrinkBoy notes, there are lots of different ways to approach it) and I came up with this:

Shake with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and serve with a twist.

Depending on things like the kinds of brandy (it'd be interesting to try this with a drier Cognac, such as Hennessy) and crème de pêche (the Vedrenne is pretty sweet and is only 18% alcohol, far less than Cointreau's 40%) you use, not to mention the acidity of the lemon juice, you may have to tinker with the proportions a bit.

January 01, 2008

I spent the early part of Christmas Eve at The Swizzle Stick Bar at Café Adelaide in New Orleans, being very well taken care of by the Queen of New Orleans Cocktails, Lu Brow, along with her excellent bartenders Mike, Kevin and Tommy. I began the evening with a most excellent Sazerac, continued with a superb Pegu Club (in which the teaspoon of lime juice came from two muddled lime half-wedges, which was a neat idea) and finally this one, which I was very pleasantly surprised to see on The Swizzle Stick's spectacular cocktail menu (even better than the last time I was in, unsurprisingly, given that Lu is the Queen and Ti and Lally, proprietors of the restaurant, are The Cocktail Chicks). It's a lovely, lovely drink, created in 1939 to commemorate Henry Dreyfus' gorgeously designed locomotive that pulled the 20th Century Limited between New York and Chicago.